


To The Blue Star, Shining

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Biting, Childhood Friends, Clothed Sex, Enemies to Lovers, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Grief, M/M, Mourning, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay, Outdoor Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Reconciliation Sex, Tears, training grounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:41:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26004337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: This was so much better than grief, he thought. Better than numb confusion, better than a rotting hole where his heart had been, seeping steadily full with poison regret. In a way, he had been waiting for this moment since the day Glenn’s sword and armor had been returned to them, hadn’t he?(Or: Dimitri edges Felixes a whole lot because he doesn't know how else to say he's sorry.)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 5
Kudos: 126
Collections: Dimilix NSFW Bingo





	To The Blue Star, Shining

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Dimitri mentions participating in sex work during his time in the slums. There are consent negotiation issues and characters dealing with grief in unhealthy ways that might be triggering for some. If these things do not concern you, please go on and enjoy, as always.

He kept trying to talk to him. 

Stalking him through war camps and monastery halls, like the stench of that foul cloak he wore wouldn’t provide ample warning. Like his graceless, clambering heavy footfalls wouldn’t give him away instantly. Like Felix had to see his silhouette to know his shadow fell over him, still. Hah. Dimitri’s presence was an omnipresent feeling, for him, there or not, on or off, and he did not know which state was worse. One ached and the other burned.

Dimitri would catch Felix’s eye on purpose. He would hover at the edge of his perception, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. Like he couldn’t decide whether to speak or stay silent, and Felix was sick to death with wondering whether he would ever find the words.

There was no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. With Glenn, he had never bothered to try.

He was trying, with Rodrigue. His father. Dead. 

Ridiculous, petty nonsense. His emotions about the matter were childish, selfish, naive, soft, antithetical to all the pretty chivalry Faerghus painted its history so proudly from. Stupid bloody fucking paintbrush. His father had known the risks, from the very first moment he’d agreed to turn his army into the cursed valley and answer the call of his King. 

No. Earlier. From the moment he’d sworn his vows to Lambert’s father, as a boy. 

Earlier. From the moment he slithered squalling into the world, probably. Just like Glenn. 

Just like Felix. 

He swung his sword, sweat flying from his brow as he turned, grunting, cutting imagined foes to invisible ribbons. Ghosts and memories. Dimitri’s shadow, falling over him from the arched entryway, silent, impassive. Was his mouth moving? Was he looking for his words, still? Felix didn’t care to see. He went on swinging, swinging, swinging until his arms ached, until his shoulders burned and his back twinged with an implicit threat. Sweat dripped down his face, off his chin, hit the sand and disappeared. It soaked into his clothes, made his shirt cling and his eyes sting, and eventually, _eventually,_ even he had to stop.

His breaths came shallow and panting, barely adequate to fill his lungs. Spots danced in front of his eyes. It was dark, he thought, dimly. He had no idea how long he’d been there. 

He could feel Dimitri’s presence, practically hear him thinking.

“I won’t die for you,” Felix informed him, unprompted. He meant it as a promise, a declaration, a fucking _vow,_ but it came out thin and wheezing, pathetic. He sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to stand straight, to raise his sword again. “Do you hear me? Boar. I won’t.” 

Muted, whispered shuffling answered him. Felix let all the breath in his lungs out as a sharp, loud cry, a fierce bellow, and charged the cloth-wrapped log that sufficed now for training -- as though there were any shortage of flesh and blood enemies providing a wealth of practice, these days! The soft southern wood parted before his blade as easily as any flesh ever had, the impact of the blow vibrating up his arms, all the way into his aching teeth. He had his jaw clenched, again. Ingrid always warned him he’d crack them all to pieces, if he didn’t knock it off. 

Something to that, maybe. 

He gazed down at the splintered pieces of the training dummy, his expression blank, his stomach sour. 

“I don’t want to talk,” he said. His voice scraped out of him, raw like a wound. 

Funny that _that_ was what prompted His Royal Highness to find his tongue at last. 

“Perhaps not,” he said, quietly. And Felix shivered, right down to the marrow of his bones, because his voice, his fucking _voice_. An echo from the past. Not Dimitri, the monster. Not Dimitri the beast, Dimitri the one-eyed demon crouched snarling before the pulverized altar of the Goddess, muttering to himself and whoever cared to listen about blood and revenge and the dead and _that woman._

Just Dimitri. 

He sounded so sad. He’d loved Rodrigue, just as much as Felix had. Moreso, in some ways. 

A childish, selfish voice wailed like a baby at the back of his mind: _If it had been me, would you have come back?_

He didn’t think so. Dimitri never came back for him, never. 

“I don’t,” he repeated, dully. “Go away.” 

Another rustle. Shadows stretched and moved. “If that is your wish,” Dimitri said, gravely, politely, always so fucking polite. Except for when he went mad, Felix supposed. 

Footsteps sounded, not enough to take him far, and then a brief pause. 

“I am so sorry,” Dimitri said, broken words and a broken voice and that’s what they were, the both of them, wasn’t it? Broken. Perfect. Perhaps one day someone would write a book, and people would sigh and simper over the operatic tragedy of it all, the mad king and his mangled shield, twisted grotesquely by his own hand into the shape of a sword, instead.

He spun, pointing the blade at his prince’s retreating back. 

“Don’t be sorry _,_ ” he hissed. “You think I care if you’re sorry? Your apologies mean nothing. Less than nothing!” 

Dimitri didn’t turn. Didn’t even move. “I understand,” he said, so sad, so broken. “I will not disturb you again. Good night, Felix.” 

When had it become night? He didn’t know. 

“Beast,” he called, realizing Dimitri truly meant to leave him like this. He was walking away from him already, slowly, but _away_ all the same. “ _Boar,_ ” Felix snapped, stepping after him, once, twice. He growled his next words: “Don’t you just -- can’t you just -- _look at me!”_ And then, in a childish fit, he brought the sword down with as much force as his exhausted arms could muster, blade-first into the sand. It stuck there with a heavy metal _thunk_ , and then it quivered in place, shaking worse than even Felix was. He wrapped his arms around himself, willing his teeth not to chatter.

Dimitri turned around. 

Goddess. It never stopped striking him, clobbering him like a physical blow. What had he done to himself? He’d changed so much. Such obvious sadness sat strangely on his new face, making him look so much less like a monster, so much more like himself. What right did he have to be sad? What right did he have to suddenly find within himself the capability to properly mourn?

What right did either of them have, really?

His eyes blurred with tears. He blinked them away. No more of that, not ever again. He’d promised, and if he could keep one promise to one person, it would be that one to himself. 

“Felix,” Dimitri murmured, his gaze so soft, so attentive, so aware. The one eye left to him shone suspiciously wet, too. And still, what right did they have?

“This is all wrong,” Felix said, low in his throat, practically gargling the words. He shook his head. Scrubbed his face, furiously. He sounded like a frog. “This is -- _stupid!_ You want to apologize to me? Then don’t say a word. _Do something.”_ His fists clenched tight, fingernails digging crescents into his palms. “Do you understand me? Do something, damn you!” His heart beat wild against his ribs, lurching, ungainly. His chest ached with its weight. 

“Felix…” Dimitri breathed. Cold sweat crawled down the back of Felix’s neck, watching Dimitri’s face try to decide whether or not it should smile. He had always been like that, ever since he was a little boy. Trying to decide what face he ought to wear. “I swear to you, I am,” he said. “You haven’t been to council.” 

“ _Fuck_ your --” 

“It’s all right!” Dimitri threw his hands up, palms forward, fingers splayed. His voice kept its gentle affect, but it rang too with a sharp edge that stole Felix’s unplanned, half-formed outburst right out of his throat. He snapped his mouth shut and swallowed, hard. “It’s all right,” Dimitri said, accompanying the words with one step forward, and then another. “No one expects you there, right now. I meant no criticism; I would only like to explain, if I can.” 

“Explain,” Felix managed, through teeth clenched so tight he could already hear Ingrid’s smug declaration, _I told you so,_ echoing in his head while his teeth all cracked to pieces. 

“Thank you.” Dimitri took a breath. Felix watched the apple of his throat as it bobbed, up and down. “I understand what you were trying to tell me, before. I am so sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to allow myself to hear it, before…” his voice caught. His face twisted into a grimace, a look of grief so stark and deep that Felix could hardly stand to witness it.

While his mind reeled, his body moved. He barely realized what he was doing until it was already done, until he was snarling close and intimate into Dimitri’s ear. “ _Don’t_ ,” he begged, even as he wrapped his arms around him. The cape and the armor made Dimitri look larger than he was, emphasized the parts of him that had changed, but Felix’s arms still fit around him easily as they always had, even if he had to stand on the tips of his toes to get the angle right. With his eyes closed, he could turn back time in his mind, wind back the years until everything ugly between them faded into a smear of bleak, formless future. Tomorrow’s problem, and not tonight’s. Dimitri’s breath shuddered as he returned the gesture, and -- Goddess, his embrace was as bone-cracking as it had ever been! But for once, Felix didn’t protest. He let the breath all leave his lungs until he was dizzy for the lack of it. The inability to think it brought was bliss. 

They stood there for some time, that way. Felix didn’t bother to keep track of it. Time was another future problem, lost in the tangle ahead where all his wild-eyed monsters waited, crouched and eager, too. 

“I understand that I have a responsibility,” Dimitri said, eventually. 

Felix laughed, crying, helpless. “To my father,” he said, bitterly. “Now that he’s dead, you hear him loud and clear. Is that it?” 

“No!” Dimitri gasped, parting from their embrace at last. He shifted his grip to cling to Felix’s shoulders, instead, his thumbs digging thoughtless divots into his skin. He leaned close, his good eye searching Felix’s face. “No, Felix, that’s not it. Though I do have a responsibility to him, make no mistake...” 

Felix jerked back, but Dimitri shook his head and held him firm in place. The ease with which he did so was, frankly, humiliating. 

“-- Far more important is my responsibility to you,” he finished, quickly. “To you, Felix, and all the others. Dedue. Ingrid and Sylvain, our Professor, Mercedes and Ashe and Annette! To Lady Rhea and the Knights of Seiros, her steadfast faithful, and to all the common folk with their heads bowed in endless prayer, hoping only for an end to death and war and suffering. To my _people,_ Felix! The ones who still believe, yes, but also to the ones who gave up hope long ago.” 

And then, with a bashful blush on his cheeks, he turned his head and coughed, delicately. 

It was a gesture that belonged wholly to the Dimitri he had been, the boy Felix had loved most in all the world. To see it on his face, now -- to see how well it _fit_ his face, now -- it shocked him to his core, down past the grief and mourning, down past the overwhelming hopelessness of their situation, down even past the numbness beyond that. 

“Perhaps,” Dimitri murmured, stepping close again, “To those ones, most of all.” 

“The ones with no hope.” 

“I will give them hope, again, Felix. I swear it.” 

He laughed. Swallowed a sob. Damn him, but he wanted it, so, so badly. He wanted that hope, needed the balm for his soul. Dimitri put his arms around him again, slow and hesitant, asking permission with each careful escalation of that contact, and Felix let him, until he was pressed tight against Dimitri’s chest, breathing shallow, eyes closed. Pretending this was still their past, and not this awful, impossible tangled present. 

“They don’t care about your vendetta against Edelgard,” he said, finally, breaking the illusion as definitively as possible. “They barely even care about Duscur, anymore. They weren’t there. They mourned their dead and assigned their blame and moved on, and even if you could prove that girl orchestrated the entire plot herself, Dimitri --” 

“And I cannot,” Dimitri murmured, softly. His arms around Felix tightened, and Felix kept his head down, his eyes closed, afraid to look up at him. “She did not. But neither is she fully innocent,” he added, stiffly. “I do not know why she is in league with those responsible. I cannot say what power they have promised her, what lies they have clouded her judgement with, but, I swear…” he trailed off, helplessly. 

Felix snorted into his shoulder. “I can guess,” he muttered. “Manufactured crest stones to create those beasts of war. Enough power to bring low even the mighty Church of Seiros. If the Archbishop is even still alive --” 

“Enough,” Dimitri said, curtly, and Felix nodded, letting it go. He didn’t want to discuss it, either. He was exhausted of it, the politics, the misunderstandings, the secrets and lies that had led to so much suffering! “I did not come here to speak of the Emperor, or even the Empire,” Dimitri continued, his voice gentler, now, hopeful with a hint of pleading. “I came here to tell you that I intend to march north.” 

Felix went still and quiet in his arms, hardly daring to breathe.

“If you will give me your trust just one more time, Felix, I swear to you, I will take us home. Save our people.” He took a deep breath. “Save our people.” And then, all at once, his commanding, kingly demeanor deflated. His next works came slower, uncertain. “What happens after that, I… I do not know, but if you will stay by my side to Fhirdiad, at least, I would be grateful.” 

And Felix -- Felix laughed. He turned his face into Dimitri’s neck, tightened his arms around him, and squeezed him tight. “You think you need to ask,” he said, incredulously. 

“I do,” Dimitri said. “Though I know I have no right to ask it of you. You are well within your rights to take your leave at once, to return to Fraldarius and tend to your family’s affairs.” 

“My family,” Felix said, bitterly. “My mother, my brother, my father -- dead. All dead.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Dimitri murmured, his voice thick. 

“There are my -- the, the people to think of, however,” he conceded, though he hated to think about this, too. “They are fighting still, resisting the Empire with all their strength. They need a commander.” 

“I see,” Dimitri said, his voice tinged with deep, resigned sorrow. “I will not stop you. I know you will lead them well.” 

Felix shoved him back, hard, stepping out of the warm circle of his arms. Dimitri let his arms fall to his sides and merely looked at him, studying him like a puzzle. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Felix said, and then, voice hot, “How dare you even think so! I’ve followed you this far, haven’t I?” He raised a finger to point accusingly, to shake it in his face. “I followed your trail along the border for years, and when I finally found you, what did I do?” 

“Felix --” 

“-- I followed you!” He threw his hands up, beyond exasperated. “Into the mouth of the valley of torment! East, south, west, everywhere _except_ for where I wanted us most to go. Yelling and kicking and screaming all the while, perhaps, but I was there at your side when the fighting started. Wasn’t I?” 

“Yes,” Dimitri rasped, helplessly. They both knew it was true. 

“I think I would follow you anywhere,” Felix admitted, then, softly.

“Then follow me home, Felix,” Dimitri said, matching his tone and meeting his eyes. “Stay by my side, for one final battle. When our people are free, I will ask you to act as regent, in my stead.” 

Felix gaped at him. “ _What?_ ” 

“And if I should fall, after --” 

“Shut up,” he breathed. “Not another word. What is this -- nonsense? I can’t rule the _Kingdom,_ Dimitri, are you --” _Insane,_ he wanted to say, but the word caught in his throat, choking him. “-- You cannot be serious,” he said, instead.

Dimitri reached for him again. This time, he put his hands on Felix’s waist, and pulled him close. “I can’t take you to Enbarr,” he said, and his voice cracked, then, raw and bleeding. Felix stared at him, cold fury roaring all through him. 

“You can’t stop me,” he said, flatly. 

“Please. Don’t you see? I can’t be the reason you die, too. Felix. _Please._ ” 

Felix slapped his hands away, stumbled back. “So you think I can’t hold my own?” 

“No!” 

“You think I would _allow_ it, after all this? I just told you I wouldn’t die for you! Weren’t you listening to me at all?” 

“You know the reality of the battlefield as well as I do,” Dimitri protested. “These are not always _choices_ we have the luxury of making. Do you think I don’t know? You are never far from me, always where you can see me. It… it is a comfort in the chaos of battle to have you close, it always has been, and yet --” 

“I’m not staying behind like some meek mannered _beaurocrat_ to handle paperwork and keep the court in line while _you_ march on to put an end to this war!” He turned on a heel and spotted his discarded sword, stuck blade-first in the dirt. He bent and pulled it free, grunting at the effort it took. “And you can’t afford to leave me behind,” he insisted. “Does the Professor know about this ridiculous plan? They’ll never allow it. Draw your weapon.” 

Dimitri’s lips fell open. “I beg your pardon?” 

“Draw, damn you,” Felix struck forward to catch the blade’s edge harmlessly against a broad expanse of blue steel, directly over his heart. “I’ll prove it to you.” 

“I know how capable you are.” 

“Clearly _not!_ ” He jabbed the blade forward, harder. Metal scraped and squealed, and Dimitri staggered back at the impact. Felix withdrew and fell into form, whip-quick, eyes flashing. “Draw,” he hissed. “You’ve insulted me, personally. Don’t think I’ll let that slide.” 

“Ah,” Dimitri said, studying him. “So it’s a duel for your honor, then? Fine. I accept.” 

He reached back, and slowly, he brought his weapon around to bear. Areadbhar, the mighty lance of legend. Felix tightened his grip on his own sword -- it was no ancient relic gifted to man by the Gods, but it was perfectly balanced, the blade razor-sharp, a master’s work in all regards. 

Felix struck first. 

The blade squealed along the metal of Dimitri’s breastplate, driving him back, and Dimitri rebuffed him with the butt of his lance, nearly ending the fight in one quick jab before it’d properly even begun. Felix had no illusions. One lucky strike, and Dimitri would break all his ribs without a second thought. Worse, if he used the business end of it. Areadbhar would part the flimsy cloth and leathers he wore now as easily as it had the flesh of countless imperials, and then what? 

It didn’t matter. He struck again, turned, struck, lunged, there, and there, and _there,_ his blows bouncing off Dimitri’s armor or his spear’s sturdy haft, harmless. 

Dimitri wasn’t fighting him, he realized. He was just defending himself. 

“ _Fight_ me,” he demanded, raising heavy, leaden arms to wipe at the sweat dripping down his brow and into his eyes. His sleeves were soaked still with his prior exertions, and he swore under his breath at the way the world blurred and distorted, torchlight and darkness and Dimitri’s sad, sad face all smearing together like pigment on a messy palette.

He expected Dimitri to argue, to try and reason with him. So when instead he lowered his shoulders and readied his lance and _lunged,_ Felix was beyond unprepared for it. He could barely fucking _see._

Dimitri crashed into him, spinning Areadbhar in his hands like a child’s toy, jabbing it viciously into Felix’s stomach, and for a moment -- just a moment, washed in red -- Felix wondered if he’d actually killed him. Hah. But, no. He’d knocked the breath out of him with the blunt end, that was all. And it was enough. Felix fell back, gasping for air that refused to come, his sword falling uselessly away from him. He’d been at it for hours, hours upon hours. He could barely beat Dimitri on his best days, fresh in the morning -- and that was _before_ the great big stubborn fool had spent five years growing taller, broader, and ever more deadly in the wilds. 

Stupid. 

He might have kept his feet, still, but Dimitri wouldn’t even allow him that. He fell on him like a force of nature. In moments, Dimitri’s hand was at his throat, squeezing tight, cutting off the feeble wheezing noises Felix had been making. When Dimitri threw him to the ground, he landed hard on his back, stars dancing before his eyes. 

But Felix wasn’t the sort to give up easy. Even flat on his back and gasping pathetically for air, he had presence of mind enough to know what to do next. Dimitri loomed over him, stepping closer, closer, and Felix kicked his legs out, sweeping them together in a wide arc to catch him against the unprotected backs of his knees. His legs buckled, and Areadbhar’s vicious, glowing stone winked wickedly when Dimitri brought it down to catch himself, impaling the dirt just inches from his face. Felix twisted and grabbed for it with both hands -- if he couldn’t disarm Dimitri now, he had no chance -- but he was so strong, so fucking _strong._ Dimitri simply overpowered him, pushing the long line of Areadbhar’s haft down, forcing Felix back until it pressed a cold promise just over the apple of his throat. 

He coughed beneath the unforgiving weight of it, gazing up, eyes blazing. 

“You can’t,” he croaked, hoarse and hardly audible at all. 

“I can,” Dimitri said, grimly. 

“You _can’t_ , Dimitri!” Felix cried, tears blurring his vision once more. He couldn’t stop them, this time, couldn’t keep them from leaking out of the corners of his eyes and down into his hair, into the dirt. 

Dimitri’s lips moved, his breath a jittery whisper. That wild look flooded his eye, again, but looking closer, even that seemed different, now. A glint of intent shone there, a shine of shrewd awareness, and Felix was still puzzling over what he could possibly have been planning when Dimitri bent down over the weapon between them and pressed their lips together, hard. 

His mind went blank, filled with static shock. His grip loosened on Areadbhar’s haft, and Dimitri pressed in closer, unthinking. Felix’s faint wheezing halted as the bar pressed over his windpipe, even as he parted his lips and groaned willingly into Dimitri’s panting, open mouth. Dark spots grew into black lines and then blotches, blotting out Dimitri’s face, the training grounds around them, the sky and all the glittering stars beyond. 

He thought he felt Dimitri pull back, then. Thought he heard a shocked, gasping curse fall from his lips, but that couldn’t be right. Dimitri never swore. The absence of that cold pressure at his throat didn’t quite process, and just for a second, the world sloughed sideways into muted, peaceful, quiet greys. 

“Felix!” Dimitri cried, pulling him back. Felix coughed, and then sucked in a breath, wincing at the raw, bruised state of his throat. There was something warm on his face, and when he opened his eyes, he was shocked to find Dimitri’s hands cradling him, thumbs brushing frantically over his cheeks. “Felix,” Dimitri repeated, “Felix, Felix…” over and over, his voice a mumbled, frightened frenzy. He pulled him closer, and Felix remembered dully that he’d fallen to his knees over him. Of course. He coughed again, blinking. 

“Stop that,” he croaked, and then he snapped his mouth shut, shocked at the hoarse sound of it and how much it hurt to speak. Gingerly, he attempted to swallow, and he regretted that, too. 

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri replied, burying his face into the crease between Felix’s neck and shoulder, breathing hard. “Goddess, Felix, I don’t know what to do. There are no words, I know that. There is nothing I can say. But I do not know what to _do._ I can’t stop you, not without hurting you, and I can’t lose you, I _cannot lose you._ Felix, oh, Felix…” 

He sucked in a long breath, deep and noisy, and then, finally, he fell quiet and still. A shuddering little tremor shook them both.

Slowly, Felix raised his aching arms. He wrapped them fiercely over Dimitri’s shoulders, around his neck, gripping tight.

“I won’t die for you,” he repeated, grimly. “I promise.” 

“Promise me you won’t _die_. For _any_ reason, you understand? _”_

Felix laughed, hoarsely, ignoring the pain of it until the muscles there spasmed in protest and he dissolved into another fit of coughing, instead. Fresh tears spilled over his cheeks, and he couldn’t have said whether they were from the physical discomfort or that horrible, heavy tightness growing in his chest. Dimitri raised his head, and Felix met his eyes, pointedly.

“I can’t do that,” he rasped, blinking the damned tears away as best he could. “But -- listen. I promise this: I won’t die before you do.” He had to stop to cough, again, and he felt Dimitri touch him, felt his hands as they brushed sweat-slick strands of hair back off his face. He didn’t have the energy to protest. He wasn’t sure he even truly wanted to.

“That’s not good enough,” Dimitri said, but Felix heard the resignation in his voice. He had to know how childish it was, asking for promises that couldn’t be kept. Almost as childish as indulging him.

Felix glared up into his face, the frayed tether of his patience snapping, at last. 

“You kissed me,” he accused. Were they supposed to pretend it hadn’t happened? 

Dimitri went very still, atop him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Felix heard him swallow, saw the slow bobbing motion of his throat. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t thinking. You just looked so much like --” 

“ _Don’t,_ ” Felix hissed, cutting him off. His stomach flipped, and a wave of actual _nausea_ rose in him, sudden and sour. He drew his arms back to shove him away. “Don’t you dare.” He tried to jerk back, to unpin himself, and succeeded only in struggling uselessly beneath him. 

Dimitri gazed down at him with that one blue eye, his panic plain in the dull shine of his blown pupils. He made as though to back off, to stand up… but then caught himself midway through the movement, and instead caught Felix’s hands firmly in his own. Felix opened his mouth to protest, but to his horror, the only sound he could muster turned out to be ragged, pathetically watery half-sob. 

“Like _yourself,_ Felix,” Dimitri hastened to explain, squeezing his fingers even as he pinned his hands in the dirt. “Yourself, when we were younger, you see? You reminded me of us, how we were, before… hah.” He closed his eye. “Goddess,” he sighed. “Before nearly everything, now.” 

He sniffed. Peered up at him, frowning. “So you _kissed_ me?” 

Dimitri leaned in close, so close that for a moment, Felix thought he might kiss him, again. Humiliatingly, he tilted his chin up, hopeful, _eager_ \-- and he saw the moment Dimitri realized what he’d assumed, what he was doing in response. 

He saw it, because the way Dimitri smiled, then -- knowing, wolfish -- it made him _wild._ His heart launched into rapid, stuttering beats, and heat swept up all through him, making him burn head to toe. He’d never felt anything exactly like it, and embarrassing as it was, he wanted to chase it, needed to catch it, study it, explore it. He nodded, just once, barely perceptible, but Dimitri saw that, too. 

Their next kiss went somewhat differently from the first. 

Dimitri tossed Areadbhar aside, letting it roll to a slow and unceremonious stop, discarded in the dirt. Felix opened his mouth, fully intending to scold him -- that weapon was legendary, _irreplaceable,_ and his father had given up who knew what to reclaim it, besides -- but then Dimitri’s mouth was on his, his tongue taking greedy advantage of his parted lips. Whatever harsh words he might have found fled his mind, and instead of speaking, he merely groaned overwhelmed pleasure back into Dimitri’s mouth. He realized a moment later that he was just _lying_ there, allowing himself to be acted upon. 

He didn’t know how to _do_ this, for one thing. 

He refused to think too hard on the reasons why Dimitri might. 

Even so, his superior experience was undeniable. Felix followed his lead, meeting Dimitri’s demanding explorations with his own tongue and then his teeth, too. Dimitri licked greedily into Felix’s mouth, panting raggedly, and Felix lifted his chin and caught his lower lip in his teeth and bit down, hard enough to draw out a pained gasp, and then a low, rumbling growl. The sound of it sent a fresh tide of sweet heat through him, pooling in his belly and stirring his cock to eager attention, too. 

Dimitri pulled back, their lips parting with an obscenely wet sound, and then he rolled his hips against Felix, purposefully emphasizing his own affected state. Felix felt the press of him against the inside of his thigh, molten hot even through their clothing, and he shuddered at the sensation. He could not help but open his legs wider, inviting more. 

Which was -- _madness_ , really, because they were in _public!_

“You don’t seem to mind so very much,” Dimitri panted down at him. His one eye had a glazed look to it, lidded and distant.

“Are you teasing me, or asking permission?” 

“Ah…” Dimitri smiled down at him. His eye sparked with emotion, too many all tangled together to examine individually. “Both,” he said, firmly. 

“Hah.” He rolled his eyes. “I should tell you to control yourself,” he said. A ridiculous bluff. He could feel the long line of Dimitri’s cock, pressed tight against his thigh, and his own body clamored for more. He hadn’t felt like this in years, not since -- Goddess, since the Academy, since he’d come face to face with _that_ Dimitri, two years older than when he’d seen him last and so much taller, stronger, broader than before. _Saints._

Dimitri seemed to sense the trajectory of his thoughts. He gave Felix’s hands a squeeze, and then he lowered himself to murmur directly in his ear, each of his breaths a hot, damp distraction. “Will you, though?” he wondered aloud, teasing still. 

Felix squirmed beneath him, hating the way his cock twitched and his face flushed even hotter, somehow. Where had he learned to speak like that, to adopt such a tone, such a manner?

“I shouldn’t _have_ to,” Felix panted, and though he meant it as a rebuke, it hardly sounded like one. He was fourteen, again, on his back in the training yard, whining up at Dimitri over something inconsequential because he was embarrassed that he had lost their latest bout. 

“I must confess…” Dimitri sighed, “my self control has been somewhat lacking, lately. You may have noticed, Felix…” he pressed his nose into Felix’s hair, his lips against his temple. “Goddess,” he breathed. “I’ve missed you so.” 

Emotion rose like a flood in him, quick and furious. He snatched one of Dimitri’s ears between his fingers, pinching hard, grimly appreciating the pained yelp he received in response. “I have _been here,_ ” he ground out, “for _months!_ ” 

“Yes,” Dimitri agreed, jerking out of his grip. His pinched expression smoothed to something almost -- _bashful._ Such a strange expression on this new face he had! Felix reached up without thought to touch him, heedless of the way Dimitri flinched away from him. Ah, but when he realized Felix intended him no harm, he leaned into his touch, instead; and that, too, made his chest ache with emotions he could not have even begun to untangle. “I was… not myself,” Dimitri mumbled, and then he shook his head. “No. I was myself. I had resigned myself to my purpose and my fate. I hated you, all of you, for muddling that clarity, ghoulish as it seems to call it such… but I wish…”

He raised his face upward, and Felix gazed up at him in turn, wondering what Dimitri saw that he did not. 

“I wish it had all happened differently,” Dimitri said, eventually, so softly Felix had to strain to hear. 

“Well, so do I.” 

Dimitri looked down at him, and that sadness from before was back, writ into every line of his expression -- but there was hope shining in that eye of his, now, too. Felix couldn’t recall ever having seen that, before. The relief it put in him was almost better than the tension in his middle, the heat between his legs. He’d rather have hope than gratification -- but, his body begged him, if he could have _both…_

“You wanted a prince,” Dimitri spoke, interrupting his wild, careening thoughts. “Noble and worthy of your admiration and loyalty. I am sorry that I could not be that for you, in the end.” 

“A prince,” Felix snorted. “I wanted you.” 

“...Even now?” 

Felix tilted his head, glaring balefully up at him. 

“What do you think?” He let his eyes rove meaningfully down his body, at their suggestive position, at the obvious, straining line of his cock in his pants. 

Dimitri leaned down and pressed their lips together, startling him quiet with a kiss. “Felix,” he murmured gently, his mouth moving against his. 

“Mm?” 

He slid a hand down the length of Felix’s body, quick and bold, and pressed his palm firmly between his legs. Felix jumped at the contact, and then he gasped at how Dimitri’s fingers teased him over the fabric, pressing and squeezing, driving him mad. 

“Come to bed with me,” Dimitri whispered, and Felix whimpered against his lips. He wanted to, quite desperately. He couldn’t possibly. He knew Dimitri. He knew him better than anyone. He’d offer his own body up as penance if he thought it might earn him forgiveness, wouldn’t he? Was that what this was, some twisted ploy to leverage his grief, to, to… 

Hah. Seiros, what was wrong with him? Sweat rolled down his neck, dripping into the dirt. Was he cold? Why else would he shudder, so? 

“You have no right to do this to me,” he said, and even he could hear the inevitable assent in his quavering voice. 

“I know,” Dimitri said, and he must have heard it too, because he lifted him by the waist, then, from the ground and into the air in one smooth gesture, with only a faint little grunt to indicate it cost him any effort at all. Felix reached out for him with a shocked and unmistakably pleased gasp, and Dimitri pulled them close together, his arms looped loose beneath Felix’s backside and around the small of his back. “Oh, believe me, Felix, I do know.”

“If you’re doing this because you’re _sorry…”_

 _“_ That’s not the reason.” 

“Or out of some sick sense of twisted pity --” 

“ _Pity,_ ” Dimitri repeated, sounding perfectly mystified. “ _Pity_ , Felix, really?“

Felix let himself settle into his arms, resting his chin atop the steel plate of his armored shoulder. In truth, it was uncomfortable to be held like this; his breastplate was hard and cold and unyielding, his grip edging just on the wrong side of _too tight._ Nothing at all like the fantasies Felix had harbored privately in his youth, and, admittedly, well beyond. He didn’t mind. Given the choice between uncomfortable reality and perfect fantasy, he would choose what was real, every time. 

Dimitri made an exasperated sound, and then he circled about, heading for the looming arched exit. 

Felix thumped a fist against his back, and Dimitri paused, expectant. 

“Someone is going to see,” Felix warned. He had no idea what anyone would _make_ of it, but surely, someone would notice Dimitri of all people carrying him through the courtyard and into their old dormitories. 

Dimitri laughed, low and quiet, and Felix squirmed unhappily in his grip. 

“It’s not funny,” he hissed, sharply. 

“It is,” Dimitri disagreed. He slid the hand he had splayed over Felix’s back up to grip into his hair, instead, and then he leveraged his hold there to turn Felix’s face, to angle him for another long, hungry kiss.

Felix was still glaring at him when he eventually drew back. 

“I don’t think you realize how long you’ve been here,” Dimitri said, and then he adopted a sly sort of expression -- another look Felix could not recall seeing on him often, before, if at all. His heart squeezed. There was so much to Dimitri now that was unfamiliar to him. Together like this, held by him like this, everything in him wanted nothing but to discover it all, to claim insight into all the things he did not know and hoard it all for his own selfish benefit. 

“Hours, I’m sure,” he said, when it became clear that Dimitri expected a response. 

“Felix,” Dimitri sighed. “It’ll be dawn, again, soon. The only ones up at this hour are you and I, and...” 

He closed his mouth. 

“The restless dead?” Felix groaned into his shoulder. 

“My _point,_ ” Dimitri said, sharply, tightening his fingers in Felix’s hair, “Is that I could fuck you right here under the open sky, and no one would ever know except you and I.” 

Felix’s breath caught, and he knew Dimitri felt the way his cock jumped, pressed against him as he was. Dimitri chuckled, low in his throat, and pressed their foreheads together, hard. 

“Have you been with anyone, Felix?” he asked, and Felix flushed crimson to the roots of his hair, turning his face away. 

“No.” Dimitri knew that, surely, but Felix thought he knew what the point of asking had been. “You have,” he said. “Haven’t you?” 

“Yes.” He drew back, gazed down at him. His lips curved, and that wolf-grin was back again, toothy and dangerous. “Shall I show you all I learned, before I fled the Fhirdiad slums?” 

He hated to think of it. The state he must have been in, the circumstances, it was all horribly, wrenchingly wrong. His dismay must have shown on his face, for Dimitri’s own expression softened, then. He seemed to realize that his words had not created the intended effect, and -- incredibly -- he ducked his head, and _blushed._

A startled laugh escaped Felix’s lips, and Dimitri’s eyebrows jumped into twin arches at the sound. 

“Felix?”

“Yes,” he conceded, inevitably. As though he could possibly have said no! Perhaps he would regret it, come morning, but that was another future problem, nebulous and entirely unimportant to his present self. “Show me,” he clarified, and now it was his turn to blush. Heat seemed to suffuse his whole body, but it pooled especially hot in the pit of his stomach, tingling across the skin of his chest and neck, lighting his cheeks and ears on fire. 

Dimitri’s eyebrows climbed higher. His eye flickered down to glance meaningfully toward where their bodies pressed together, and then back up again, searching his face. 

Felix blew out a long breath, insides all squirming with nervous frustration. “Don’t make me say more,” he begged.

Dimitri nodded, slowly. “Very well,” he said. “If you wish for me to stop…” 

“I’ll tell you so.”

Dimitri laughed, low and quiet, and Felix shivered at the sound. He rapped his knuckles impatiently against his breastplate. “Take this off,” he suggested. 

“You’ve always been that way, haven’t you?”

“What way?” 

“Bossy,” Dimitri said, with a quick flash of a grin, and the kiss that followed proved just as dazzling. All possibility of rebuke or rejoinder evaporated; Felix found himself incapable of any action that was not reciprocating with as much enthusiasm as possible. 

This was so much better than grief, he thought. Better than numb confusion, better than a rotting hole where his heart had been, seeping steadily full with poison regret. In a way, he had been waiting for this moment since the day Glenn’s sword and armor had been returned to them, hadn’t he? He’d stood there with that same unbearable emptiness, then, on that dour grey day of empty condolences and somber funeral rites, and he’d waited for Dimitri. In his imagination, his fantasies, he’d come to him that night, and they had found solace in one another, just like this. 

A second chance, then. Why not? Felix was out of family, now; there could be no third. 

Dimitri carried him effortlessly into a secluded, shadowed corner and lifted him against the wall; Felix closed his eyes and tilted his chin and imagined they were seventeen, again. Perhaps in some other life he hadn’t wasted that one brief still moment of calm in their lives holding himself stubbornly apart from him on _principle._

“So eager,” Dimitri teased, and Felix grabbed his hair and pulled him viciously down again, unwilling to answer. Dimitri laughed into his mouth, indulged him for one long, sweet moment, and then caught the tip of Felix’s tongue in his teeth and bit down, hard. Felix yelped and yanked his face away, running his tongue gingerly against the top of his mouth, tasting for blood. 

“You _bit_ me,” he said, stupidly.

“Mm,” Dimitri agreed, shifting his attentions from Felix’s face to his neck, following the line of his throat. His teeth scraped over his pulse point, there, tracing pale lines down to stark collar bones. He sucked faint marks into his skin as he went, and Felix let his head loll back against the hard brick of the wall behind him and groaned his pleasure up into the archway overhead. 

“I suppose I can forgive you,” he panted, tangling his fingers in Dimitri’s hair, encouraging more of this new activity. “So long as you continue like this.” His tongue throbbed. He found he didn’t mind it, so much. 

“I thought you’d say that,” Dimitri said, and then he turned his head and sank his teeth into Felix’s shoulder, next. 

“ _Boar_ ,” he hissed, but he he didn’t pull away, this time, and Dimitri knew. Low laughter joined their ragged breathing, and Dimitri soothed the skin he’d nearly broken with his teeth with his tongue, instead. Felix whimpered at the sensation, sounds escaping him despite his attempts to clamp down and keep them in. Dimitri seemed to enjoy them; he turned and nipped his way back up Felix’s neck, treating the thinner, more sensitive skin there no more gently. Felix gasped and jerked in his grip, but Dimitri held him fast against the wall, his body eclipsing his, trapping him between the bricks at his back and the hard metal of that damned breastplate, still. He’d never bothered to take it off. 

Dimitri caught his earlobe between his teeth, and pressed his nose against his ear. “I thought of you, in truth,” he said, thoughtfully. “The first time I let a man use me for coin.” 

“Hah,” Felix snorted, giving his hair a vicious tug. Dimitri acknowledged this with a sharp grunt, and another sharp pinch of his teeth, too. “Is that supposed to be seductive?” he panted, glaring up at him. “I don’t want to hear about that.” 

“Don’t you?” Dimitri wondered aloud, humming softly to himself. “That first year. Fresh from the dungeons.” He pressed his temple against Felix’s, breathing into his face. “I hardly remember it. But I remember that, because I remember that I thought of you. Ah, Felix. I should have pressed you harder, isn’t that so?” 

“I don’t know,” he said, truthfully. Would it have mattered? Who could say. “The past is the past,” he added, sharply. “Let it be.” 

“Has there truly been no one?” Dimitri pressed him, nudging his cheek playfully with his nose. “Not in all these years?” 

“I’ve been busy.”

Dimitri pressed his lips to Felix’s temple, and then he shifted his grip to support him with only one arm, slung low around his backside. Felix felt the fingers of his free hand dive deep into his hair, pulling strands of it loose handfuls at a time. His fingernails scraped against Felix’s scalp, and down below, he shifted his knee to press firmly between Felix’s legs, rocking against him. Felix groaned helplessly at the contact, at his touch, at his eagerness to touch and kiss and consume. He’d dreamed of this, he thought, faintly. Fantasized. 

“Why now,” he demanded, in a moment of brief lucidity. 

Dimitri made a rebuking sound, and scraped his bottom teeth up the line of Felix’s jaw. “The time seemed right,” he said, which meant nothing, and was hardly an answer at all. 

“It’s because of my father,” he said. “Isn’t it?” 

“No.” 

“Don’t _lie._ ” 

“Felix…” Dimitri sighed. He kissed his forehead, pressed his chin to Felix’s brow. “Do you honestly think I never wanted you?” 

“How should I know?” Felix demanded, the pitch of his voice climbing just a hair higher. “If you did, you certainly never let on!” 

“Because you made it clear how unwelcome it would have been!” Dimitri pressed his lips into Felix’s hair, and exhaled, short and sharp. “I knew I should have pressed it. I knew… ah. I did know. I couldn’t allow myself the distraction. I knew that if you discovered what I had been doing, you would try to talk me out of it, try to sway me from my plans.” 

“And look how well that worked out for you!” 

“But I thought about it often,” Dimitri went on, as though Felix hadn’t spoken at all. “I wondered what would happen, if I could pin you here, Felix, right here, exactly like this.” He shifted his leg against him, and then he pressed his lips to the sensitive skin beneath Felix’s jaw and kissed him there, hot and wet and messy. Felix’s hips moved in rhythm with his rocking, teasing motions, dragging his cock against the insistent pressure of Dimitri’s knee, and another long, gratified moan fell out of him before he could swallow it back. 

Dimitri took it for a sign to continue. 

“I wanted so badly to find a way through those walls you’d built up between us,” he said. “I dreamt of doing so right here, like this. I’d make you submit, I thought. Force you to say my name, again! To say nothing _but_ my name, over and over. I’d fantasize about making you howl it out in helpless pleasure for me, Felix...” 

They were out in the open, and still, Felix felt that there was not enough air. He sucked in a labored breath, distantly horrified at the sounds he was making, listening to this, experiencing this. Dimitri shifted his grip to Felix’s legs, supporting his thighs, spreading them wide, and Felix braced himself against the wall and lifted them to wrap obediently around his waist. He crossed his ankles at the small of Dimitri’s back, locking them there to hold himself up, and looked up to search Dimitri’s face. Before he could ask just what he was about, exactly, Dimitri sank to his knees, and Felix yelped again as he dropped with him. The back of his shirt caught and bunched against the wall, and the old chipped bricks scraped against his skin, but he found he didn’t mind the pain of that, either. He found it grounding, a fine complement to the throbbing marks Dimitri’s teeth had left along the line of his neck and shoulder, a welcome contrast to the intense _need_ pulsing through him, too. 

On his knees before him, with Felix’s legs wrapped around him still, Dimitri bent his body over him to kiss him anew. Folded against the wall as he was, Felix could only comply, tilting his chin and running his hands over Dimitri’s shoulders, down the back of his neck, frustrated all over again by his heavy armor. 

He turned his face aside, panting heavily. 

“Dimitri,” he whined. “Take the damned armor off, won’t you?” 

He expected more teasing refusal, but to his surprise, Dimitri pressed their foreheads together and nodded agreement, instead. “Help me with it,” he said, urgently, and then both their hands were moving. Buckles and buttons and sweaty straps loosened under Felix’s quick, working fingers, and Dimitri unbuckled the clasps of his cape to cast that aside, first. He lifted the bulk of the breastplate next with a grunt of effort, and it too landed beside them in the dirt, this time with a heavy, final _thunk._ A sweat-soaked layer of cloth padding followed, and with the armor off him, his shape was more familiar, though no less formidable for it. 

Felix wasted no time. He slid his hands beneath the thin, clinging fabric of that final layer, tracing lines of hard muscle up the expanse of his stomach, up over his chest. His skin was so hot beneath his fingers, slick with sweat, and when he found Dimitri’s nipples amidst a field of fine, wiry hair and gave one a firm pinch, the low, affected sound Dimitri made shot straight to his cock. He ran his thumbs over the sensitive, puckered skin around each of them, and Dimitri took the opportunity to lean back and lift the shirt up over his head, baring himself to Felix’s gaze at last.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he practically purred, catching Felix’s wrists to hold his hands there against his chest. Felix flexed his fingers, admiring him openly, letting his eyes drag down to appreciate his form with new purpose. 

They paused at the obvious shape of Dimitri’s cock, strained and outlined in stark relief through the fabric of his pants. He swallowed, hard. His own pants were uncomfortably tight, now, trapping him in his smallclothes -- and he was nowhere near so big, so thick. He darted his eyes back up, cheeks blazing. 

“Let me see the rest of you,” he demanded. 

“Not yet.” 

“Not _yet?_ Dimitri. I think I’ve waited long enough!” 

Dimitri chuckled at him, low and promising. “Just a little longer,” he soothed. “I promise to reward your patience.” 

With an annoyed huff, Felix leaned back against the wall, shaking his hair out over his shoulders. “Fine,” he said, though he made his displeasure clear. “What next.” 

“Answer my question,” Dimitri suggested. 

“ _Yes,_ ” Felix snapped, biting the word off like a curse. “I’m enjoying it. If I wasn’t, you’d know.” 

Dimitri nodded, his lips twitching into a brief smirk, there and gone. His hands released Felix’s wrists, and he pulled back, shifting on his knees away from him. Felix blinked at him, brow creasing. Dimitri hooked his arms beneath Felix’s knees and sank low before him, nearly to the ground, and pressed a slow kiss over the fabric of his shirt, over his navel. Felix sucked in a breath through his teeth, watching, transfixed. His cock throbbed in time with his heartbeat, desperate for attention, but for all his complaining, he wouldn’t have hurried this for all the world. 

Dimitri pulled the hem of Felix’s shirt higher with his teeth, curling his arms around his thighs, settling comfortably between his legs and on his belly in the dirt. 

“What are you doing,” Felix breathed. His hands went to Dimitri’s hair on instinct, his fingers itching to run through it, to trace the strap of his eyepatch and brush sweat damp strands of it out of his face, so he could better see that one good eye shining up at him.

As though in answer, Dimitri pressed his lips against the bare strip of flesh he’d exposed, kissing Felix’s stomach, running his tongue teasingly into the dip of his navel, leaving long, wet lines in his wake that gleamed when the moonlight caught them just right. Felix shuddered and squirmed in his grip, shocked by how sensitive he was _wherever_ Dimitri touched him, like his whole body had attuned itself purposely to extract pleasure from his attention. 

“Whatever I like,” Dimitri replied, and then he kissed him again, lower, down the soft skin of his abdomen, to the waiting line of his waistband. “I’ve dreamed of having you so many ways, I can scarcely decide what I want most.” 

“You’re just saying that,” Felix hissed. “Don’t bother with humoring me. Just get on with it.” 

Dimitri lifted his head. “I’m not,” he said. “Only the truth between us now, Felix.” He lowered his face, pressed a kiss against the hot line of Felix’s straining cock, his lips burning against him even through the fabric of his pants. Felix groaned at just the sight of it, shifting in Dimitri’s grip to open his legs wider, inviting more. 

“Take them off,” he begged, wishing he couldn’t hear the desire plain in his own voice, the embarrassing eagerness.

“As you like,” Dimitri purred anew. “Put your legs here, over my shoulders. Good.” He pulled Felix up, bending him so that his knees jutted up on either side of his face, and then his fingers pulled roughly at Felix’s buttons, popping at least one off in his thoughtless haste. Felix made an annoyed sound, but a moment later Dimitri had his pants open, and all thoughts of protest fled. The cool night air was a shock to his overheated, sensitive skin, and before he could recover from _that_ , Dimitri bowed his head and ran his tongue in a teasing swirl over the tip. 

Felix cried out, _loudly_ , his hips jerking in Dimitri’s grip. 

“Good?” Dimitri hummed, smiling up at him. He circled a thumb and forefinger about the base of Felix’s cock, squeezing tight. 

“Yes, ah, good,” Felix stammered, and then his brows drew down and he gave Dimitri’s back a rebuking nudge with his heel. “Don’t _stop,_ ” he gasped, hips twitching up, eager for more. 

Dimitri nodded, and then he bowed his head once more. This time, he took Felix’s cock between his lips, fully into his mouth, his tongue lavishing the underside with mind melting attentions, sliding wet and hot along his length. Felix cried out, shocked and far too loud, again, his sharp cry bouncing off the high walls of the training yard and echoing around them. _Fuck._ If anyone was awake, they’d surely hear. His face blazed crimson, and sweat pooled on his chest and stomach and rolled in cold, stinging lines over the scratches on his back. 

True to his orders, Dimitri didn’t stop. 

Felix struggled for breath as Dimitri drew him deeper, groaning around his cock, his throat vibrating sweetly around him with every sound he made. It was unlike anything Felix had ever felt before. He had never been particularly talented, when it came to pleasuring himself. He’d rarely even felt the urge in the years since Dimitri’s disappearance, his supposed death. Certainly, he had never allowed himself even meaningless, physical release with anyone else; he doubted he could have performed if he tried. Thoughts of Dimitri, always _Dimitri_ , always had a way of stealing in and replacing whatever brief interest he experienced with unrelenting guilt, instead, burying any chance of arousal far beneath it. 

Not a problem, now. 

“ _Seiros,_ ” he gasped, arching his back, gripping Dimitri’s hair tight in his fingers. He couldn’t look away. Dimitri had his lips sealed tight around his cock, his cheeks hollowed and his eye closed, brows creased with concentration. There was no question that he had done this, before. He breathed deep through flared nostrils and forced himself down the length of Felix’s cock, consuming him all the way to where his fingers curled still around the base, and when his nose brushed the dark, blue-black curls of hair waiting for him there, his eye opened triumphantly.

He gave Felix’s cock a squeeze and swallowed around him, tongue lashing, still. 

And Felix realized, with a rush of heat and humiliated understanding -- 

“I’m going to come,” he gasped, seconds before he felt his balls tighten unbearably, before he curled helplessly around himself and Dimitri’s face and cried out hoarsely, heedless of the way his throat still ached and throbbed with bruises from before. 

Dimitri made an affirmative sound and pulled back, and for a moment, Felix thought he meant to pull off him completely, to let him spill into the dirt. But, no. Dimitri opened his mouth and let the swollen head of Felix’s cock rest gently on his tongue, and Felix watched through a sudden blur of overwhelmed tears as his cock jumped between his lips and shot pearly white strands into his open, waiting mouth, painting his tongue, his teeth, his lips and chin. Felix tipped his head back and jerked his hips forward and moaned his name, just as he liked, over and over, in time with each dizzying pulse of his spilling, shuddering cock. 

When it was over and he had the courage to crack his eyes open, he found Dimitri exactly where he’d left him, gazing beatifically up into his face. He had the tip of Felix’s wet and shrinking cock pressed against his lips, still, and Felix saw with a fresh blaze of heat all through him that he had left a wet line over one of his cheeks, too. Dimitri raised a hand and dragged his first two fingers through the mess, there, gathering it up. 

Felix licked his lips. Perhaps it was instinct that told him what came next, but regardless, when Dimitri held his soiled fingers up to Felix’s lips, he didn’t hesitate. He met Dimitri’s one eyed gaze boldly as he parted his lips and serviced his fingers with just as much enthusiasm as Dimitri had just shown for his cock. The taste of his own seed was bitter, salty, and would have been unpleasant had the context been anything other than what it was… but with Dimitri gazing at him so rapturously, so clearly affected, he found he didn’t mind the taste at all. He licked and sucked Dimitri’s fingers clean, the sounds wet and obscene and calling to mind other activities that might result in similar noises, between them. 

“Very good,” Dimitri praised him, and Felix flushed with pleasure at his approval, sucking at the very tips of his fingers. “Shall I push you even further, Felix? You’re so very stubborn, after all. I’m certain I could take you to the very edge…” he grinned a challenge, wide and toothy. 

Felix let his fingers fall free of his lips, and swallowed the last remnants of his own seed, blushing still at his own shamelessness. “What does that mean,” he demanded. “Tell me what you have in mind.” 

The thumb and forefinger Dimitri had circled about the base of him squeezed, hard, and Felix gasped at the sensation, his oversensitized cock twitching a tired warning in his grip. Dimitri ducked his head and lapped at him again, and Felix wrenched away from him with a ragged cry. The shock of sensation was too hot, too intense, more painful than pleasurable, but Dimitri didn’t stop. Instead, he used his wet fingers to tease at Felix’s balls, dragging his fingertips lightly over them, then cupping them in his palm to roll them gently, back and forth. Felix threw his head back with a ragged gasp, heat blazing up through his middle, lightning crackling up his spine. 

“It’s too much,” he gasped, his breaths shuddering out of him. Dimitri made a sympathetic sound, and let his fingers slide lower, further back, tracing the line of sensitive skin behind his balls. Felix knew what he was looking for. Even through his protests, through a blur of overwhelmed tears that turned the stars above to messy streaks, he could not help but lift himself up to give Dimitri better access. “It’s too much, Dimitri, please,” he begged. 

“Relax,” Dimitri replied, his voice a quiet command. Felix tried to do so, he truly did, but when Dimitri’s fingers found his hole and teased at the puckered rim of it in slow circles, another sob fell out of him and he shuddered, head to toe.

“Stop that,” he gasped, without conviction, and -- 

Just like that, Dimitri did. 

He sat back, letting Felix’s cock fall cold and limp from his lips, withdrawing his fingers from where they had been teasing, prodding, exploring his ass.

Felix gaped at him. “What are you doing?!” he demanded, aghast. 

And Dimitri laughed, low and fond, so different from the way his laughter had been, before, but just as sweet. “You see?” he said, pointedly. “ _I’ll tell you to stop,_ ” he said, puffing up his chest, making his voice high and whiny, an exaggerated imitation of Felix’s own. “It doesn’t work so well, does it?” 

“I --” Felix blinked, and then he glared furiously, kicking his back viciously with one heel. “What do _you_ suggest, then?” 

“I’ll make you a deal,” Dimitri said. 

“No.” 

“As you can see, _stop_ is far too easy to say, when, perhaps --” 

“Just keep going!” 

“-- You don’t actually _mean_ \--” 

Felix moved as though to extricate himself from their arrangement, wiggling backward to regain sole control of his own limbs. Dimitri caught his legs before he could even get them off his shoulders. 

“ _Felix,_ ” he scolded, clucking his tongue. “Listen here. If you truly wish for me to stop, you’ll need to say something you wouldn’t, regardless.” 

Felix struggled briefly in his grip, but predictably, Dimitri held him in place like it was nothing to him at all. 

“Piss off,” he hissed, raising his free hand to cover his burning face. “You are -- _unbelievable!”_

“Felix…” 

“Did you not hear me? I just told you to _keep going._ Is that not clear enough, for you? Or should I --” 

“Be _silent,_ ” Dimitri ordered. 

Felix snapped his mouth shut. Dimitri’s lips twitched into a knowing smirk. 

“Good,” Dimitri said, relaxing his grip to slide his hands back up the insides of Felix’s thighs. He bent forward over him and licked gently up the underside of his cock, letting the tip of his tongue drag along his full length and then circle the head, slowly. Felix whimpered and shook in his arms, and when Dimitri flattened his tongue and ran it in slow, decadent lapping motions over the tip, he gasped his name and swore profusely, fresh tears welling free. They spilled down his cheeks and off his chin, and Dimitri paused briefly in his ministrations to watch them fall. 

“ _Very_ good,” he murmured, and Felix both loved and hated the quiet reverence in his tone. “Cry as much as you like.” 

“You enjoy it, don’t you?” Felix sneered, and then he gasped and shuddered, because Dimitri was touching him, again, palming over his balls, teasing and prodding over his perineum. 

“I do,” he confessed, sighing happily when his fingers found Felix’s hole, again. He pressed one fingertip firm against it, and rocked it gently back and forth. Felix groaned, clenching around the contact, fluttering himself against the persistent press of his finger. “When you cry for me, it reminds me of simpler times… of those easy days when things were comfortable, between us. Back when you gave me your adoration freely, as much as I could ever want! And how I took it for granted, Felix!” He paused there to shift his grip, again, and his tone, which had been cheerful, conversational, even, shifted too. “Spread yourself for me,” he growled. 

Heat flooded him, head to toe, and he nodded, helplessly, already moving to obey. He reached behind himself and slid his hands down to do as he was told, spreading his own cheeks wide to Dimitri’s careful explorations. The angle was uncomfortable, and his elbows scraped against the wall, but still, he did it. 

Apparently satisfied, Dimitri let out a happy sigh, and ran his fingers up the seam of Felix’s ass, up and down, teasing him still. “Do you remember, Felix? You used to beg me to play Loog to your Kyphon, so you could swing your sword and kneel before me and swear the ancient vows. You knew all the words by memory.” 

He had. He knew them still. “You never seemed to grow tired of hearing me say them, either,” he accused. 

Dimitri hummed acknowledgement, denying nothing, teasing those big, thick, _far_ too gentle fingers back and forth, back and forth, pausing now and then to press the pad of his thumb or forefinger against him firmly whenever Felix clenched or relaxed. 

“ _Damn_ you,” Felix hissed eventually, squirming and writhing and rocking, desperate for relief. “Come on! You think I’ve never put my fingers in myself, before? Dimitri. _Please._ ” 

Dimitri grinned, slow and menacing, flashing teeth. “Fingers,” he breathed. “Only fingers.” 

Felix felt the color in his cheeks deepen, felt his temples throb and the hollow of his throat pulse with the rabbit-quick beat of his heart. “Plenty of times,” he insisted. “Three -- four, sometimes.” He didn’t know why he felt the need to brag about this, as though it were impressive! He’d felt the size of Dimitri’s cock. He knew perfectly well that Dimitri had plenty of cause to laugh at his plight. 

“Four slender, pretty fingers, working diligently,” Dimitri rumbled, clearly affected by the thought. Shamefully, Felix found that he was, too. “Nothing at all like these,” Dimitri said, tapping his fingers meaningfully against the quivering, aching muscle. Felix made a low, humiliating sound, burning up to the tips of his ears. They were in _public,_ he remembered, suddenly, his eyes darting in a panic to the shine of moonlight and the clearly visible stars in the strip of sky visible overhead. Anyone could happen by and overhear this, late or early or _whatever_ time it was. 

His cock stiffened back to full attention, and Dimitri made an approving sound. “Very well, Felix,” he said, definitively, as though he had decided something. “Remember this. Cry as much as you like. Beg for me to stop, if it pleases you. I’ll give you no quarter… unless you say this. Swear to me that you will be my sworn shield once more. My Fraldarius… my Felix, my trusted adviser, my right hand. Tell me that you’ll be the Kyphon to my Loog, again, Felix -- and then, perhaps, I shall show you mercy.” 

He licked his lips, long and slow, while Felix struggled to remember how to breathe. 

“We’ll see about that,” he squeaked, pathetically, after far too long a silence. 

“But you understand,” Dimitri said, leaning over him, looming. And Felix nodded, emphatically. “Good,” Dimitri said, and then he dipped his head and took his cock into his mouth once more. 

Felix hissed his name, his arms jerking forward, scraping his elbows anew as he frantically reached out to cradle Dimitri’s head in his hands. He twisted his fingers in his hair, gasping for breath, and while he was still trying to recover from the wet heat of his mouth around his cock, Dimitri pressed a finger firm against his hole and slipped inside of him, at last. 

_“Dimitri,_ ” he whispered, writhing with pleasure enough to drive a man mad. Struggle though he might, there was nowhere to go; forward there was only molten heat and the sweet, endless torture of Dimitri’s swirling tongue, and behind, the blunt press of his index finger sank in to the second knuckle, stretching Felix’s hole inexorably around it. “Oh, for -- Dimitri, Seiros, _Sothis, fuck!”_ He cried out the last, loud enough to echo around them again, the pleasure in his voice surely plain to any unlucky passers-by. 

Down below, between his legs, Dimitri made a pleased humming sound and renewed his efforts, bobbing his head up and down, fucking his mouth onto Felix’s cock. His finger wiggled happily inside of him, exploring him, and slowly, he brought a second finger near to tease suggestively around the stretched rim of his aching, clenching hole. Felix whimpered and rocked his hips and moaned his name, gripping handfuls of Dimitri’s hair in his fists, twisting viciously. As though in recompense for that pain, Dimitri grunted around his cock and then, suddenly and entirely without warning, drove his second finger in to join the first. 

Felix arched up with a sharp cry, trapped awkwardly at an angle between the wall and the ground and Dimitri’s talented, beautiful, _busy_ face. Dimitri spread his fingers viciously inside of him, making him cry out again, making him _burn_ with the sudden stretch of it. He held him open and aching, and Felix clenched desperately around him, jerking his hips up to escape the intrusion. Dimitri, of course, held him firm in place, and only pushed in deeper. 

The pain faded, dulled, and then mixed with the heat and building pleasure, and when Felix’s cries were firmly those of pleasure, again, Dimitri bent his fingers inside of him, pressing hard against his insides. Felix’s eyes fluttered open, and then they flew wide as pleasure crackled sharp and sudden up his spine, liquid lightning. Dimitri rocked his fingers inside of him, pressing firmly against that little ball of pleasure at his core, and an outright _sob_ escaped him, tears spilling down his face. 

Saints forgive him. His father was _dead_ , and he was here sobbing about _Dimitri_ while he fucked his mouth, fucked himself on Dimitri’s fingers. He felt the heat of the liquid pleasure that escaped him, warm on Dimitri’s tongue before he lapped it clean, the sounds he made as he licked and sucked absolutely fucking _obscene._ Felix panted open-mouthed into the air, moaning in a daze with each exhalation, and when his second climax struck him, he didn’t even have the presence of mind to warn Dimitri, first. One moment, he was tensed and still, his labored breaths sounding a steady rhythm, and the next, he was howling mindless pleasure to the heavens, loud enough surely to reach even the Goddess’s lonely blue star. 

When awareness touched him, again, Dimitri was rubbing small, soothing circles into his back, murmuring encouragement against the skin of his stomach. He still had two fingers inside Felix, curled against that spot within him, aching now, exhausted. 

“Stop,” he panted, weakly. 

Dimitri laughed against his skin. Pressed a kiss into the curl of hair around his cock, and shook his head. “Swear your vows,” he said, and simultaneously, he pressed his fingers hard against that bud of sensation deep inside. 

“ _Fuck!_ ” Felix gasped, curling forward, stars bursting behind his eyelids. “Dimitri, _stop!_ Ah, fuck, _fuck!”_

He didn’t stop, of course. He kissed up Felix’s abdomen, pressed a wet, loud and messy smack above his navel, and went on curling his fingers, stretching them wide, massaging that place inside of him that made him writhe and moan and beg and _burn._ His cock wept clear fluids, smearing them over his stomach. Dimitri rubbed up and down his spine with one hand, wide and soothing, and with the other, he fucked him unrelentingly, until Felix wept and cursed and begged -- but even still, he refused to swear. 

Dimitri dragged his tongue through the lines of stickly fluid on Felix's stomach, and Felix shuddered, toes curled tight. When Dimitri moved to press a gentle, sloppy kiss at the very tip of his dribbling cock, Felix cried a curse up to the Goddess, but still he didn’t swear. Dimitri ducked his head and fastened his lips gently around Felix’s quivering balls and sucked, licked, teased with varied strokes of his tongue, and Felix cried -- 

“I’m going to --” 

\-- And Dimitri lifted off, and simultaneously, withdrew his fingers, all at once. 

Felix’s mouth fell open. His cresting climax shrank and receded, and he gazed up at Dimitri with wild eyes. 

Dimitri smiled at him, and gripped the base of Felix’s miraculously stiff cock tight, hard, _too_ tight. Felix hissed, kicking at him, and Dimitri bent over him, heedless, and took him in his mouth again. 

“ _Dimitri!_ ” Felix howled, throwing his head back. Fuck, _fuck,_ it was too much! He was burning alive, burning in the heat of Dimitri’s mouth. His throbbing, desperate cock flushed practically purple, and Dimitri gave him no reprieve. There was nothing, Felix realized, then, nothing but this, nothing but endless, overwhelming pleasure, forever.

He couldn’t think. Dimitri’s grip on him ensured he couldn’t come, and his balls ached with dull, deep, resounding pain, desperate for release. 

Dimitri seemed to sense some change in him. He lifted off his cock with a wet sound, faint to Felix’s ears. “I’ll make it easier,” he offered, gently. “Just say yes, Felix. Yes, to all I said before. Yes, and I swear, I’ll give you all you want, all you need.” 

Tears spilled down his cheeks, hot, endless. He sucked in a thin, reedy breath. 

“Yes,” he rasped, croaking, barely audible.

“Yes,” Dimitri repeated, loosening his grip, just a fraction. Felix sobbed -- with relief, with regret, with love and sadness and nebulous _emotion_ so strong he had no idea how he was meant to survive it. How could a person live, feeling like this? Feeling so much? He couldn’t possibly. 

“Yes,” he said again, louder. 

Dimitri made a sound -- perhaps a sob -- and bent to kiss him. His grip slackened around his cock, stroked him gently, sweetly instead. “Felix,” he whispered into his mouth, reverent. “My Felix… say it again. Tell me yes.” 

“Yes,” Felix gasped, shuddering against him. Close, now, close, close. “Yes,” he panted, “Dimitri, yes, yes, _please_ , yes…” 

And Dimitri held him, stroked his cock and kissed him hard and held him close as he shuddered and crested again, his mind whiting to static as his third climax swept him up. He spilled some pathetic few dribbles, utterly spent, and when it was through, Dimitri moved to pull him close, holding him tight against his chest. 

They remained like that for some time, Felix thought. He wasn’t sure. He was dimly aware that Dimitri moved them, eventually, lifted him and made him decent, again. As decent as he could, at least. He’d torn off several of his buttons -- of course he had. He would have laughed, if he’d had the energy. 

Slowly, the sky above shifted from deep black to blue-grey, and Dimitri bent to press a kiss against his forehead, his hair tickling Felix’s face. 

Felix wrinkled his nose, frowning up at him. “ _What_?” he tried to demand, thought it escaped him as a half mumble, barely intelligible. 

Dimitri parsed it well enough. “Let me take you to bed,” he said. “Unless you intend to sleep here, outside…?” 

Felix groaned, long and loud. “Fine,” he said. “Do what you want.” 

Dimitri made a happy sound, and then he lifted Felix easily even as he regained his feet. So damnably strong. Felix chuckled, softy, curling against him. 

“May I ask?” Dimitri inquired, polite as ever. It all seemed perfectly normal, so long as Felix kept his eyes closed. 

“You’ll just leave your clothes here?” Felix asked, reaching up to tug at his hair. “Your armor? Areadbhar? They’ll think you’ve gone mad again, with grief or worse.” 

“They’ve thought worse of me,” Dimitri reasoned. “I care more for your comfort than theirs. I suppose I will need to overcome that bias, if I’m to ... “ he trailed off. 

“Hm?” Felix nudged him with his nose. “If what.” 

He shook his head. “Never mind,” he murmured. “We must look to what’s next.” 

A pause. Felix felt him swallow, felt him hesitate. 

“What,” he snapped. “Just say it.” 

“The words we spoke, when -- just now.” 

Goddess, it was unbelievable. This man could do that to him, shamelessly, in the open under the stars, and then be bashful about it, later? Ridiculous. Incredible. His Dimitri. 

“What about them,” he demanded. 

“You must know, of course, that I would never hold you to them. It’s… bed sport, you understand. I --” 

“You shut your mouth,” Felix cut him off, sharply. Dimitri gazed down at him, bemused. “Don’t tell me what my own words mean. I know what I meant, and so do you.” 

Dimitri’s bemused look faded to something altogether sweeter, something that Felix could hardly bear to look at. “Felix,” Dimitri breathed, so reverent, always. “I… I may disappoint you, yet,” he said, tremulously. 

“You won’t.” 

“You truly don’t think so?” 

Felix blew out a noisy breath into his face. “Why did you do this,” he demanded. 

Dimitri gave him a startled glance. “I... “ he frowned. His jaw tightened. “Because I wanted to,” he said. 

“Hah.” 

“Because I’ve wanted you for as long as I can remember, and I knew you felt the same,” Dimitri went on, speaking quicker with every word. “Because, I suppose, I knew that Rodrigue’s death would leave you open to such overtures, that it would leave you able to let yourself... “ he paused. “Say yes. So, yes. I’m no saint, Felix.”

Felix laughed, low and quiet. “I would never accuse you of such,” he promised. He sucked in his breath, and then he let it out in a huff. “Well,” he said. “That’s all right, then. Just promise me, damn you.” 

“Felix?” 

“We go _north,”_ he said, firmly. 

And Felix felt Dimitri stand straighter, felt him tighten his arms around his body. “We go north,” he agreed, his voice strong and true.

**Author's Note:**

> for #dmlxNSFWBingo 2020


End file.
